Brothers & Sisters – “Where There’s Smoke…” (ABC)

Synopsis: Nora (Sally Field) takes her mother (Marion Ross) in after she falls and signs of dementia are becoming apparent. Sarah (Rachel Griffiths) thinks she is pregnant as Luc (Gilles Marini) is about ready to head back to France. Meanwhile, Kevin (Matthew Rhys) and Scotty (Luke Macfarlane) await to see if their surrogate is pregnant.

Review: This episode really shows why this series has recently been renewed for a fifth season. The series might not be bringing in 12-14 million viewers a week like it did during it’s first season, but a lot of that can contribute to Desperate Housewives having lower numbers this season as well.

Sally Field and Marion Ross have had a great chemistry together since Ross first appeared in season one. Her character Ida is more hard headed and fiery than Nora, and they go head to head perfectly. Like many classic episodes of this series, the comedic portions really make the show fly. The scene with those hilarious psychic readings over the phone with Kevin and Scotty and the fortune teller had me laughing out loud.

There were two side stories to this episode that will be brought up next week. The first dealt with Robert McCallister (Rob Lowe) secretly taking a job with an unknown company. He originally declined the job, but after he and Kitty (Calista Flockhart) got into an argument, and after a talk with Justin (Dave Annable), Robert agreed to taking the job.

The other side story involves Justin. A military friend of his died in Iraq and he went to the funeral. He is starting to consider going back to Iraq and serving another tour of duty. The producers of the series have stated a main character that isn’t Nora, Kitty, Robert or Sarah will die by the end of the season. After seeing him think about going back makes me wonder if it is Justin that will be the one to meet his demise.

Overall, this series needs to be watched by more people and should be in a better timeslot. I feel this series would do better than Grey’s Anatomy on Thursdays and much better than anything that has been on at 10 PM on Wednesdays. Who knows, maybe we will see a better timselot this fall.